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20th North America-Europe Data Exchange Meeting

22-24 May 2007, Darmstadt

David Hennings, Met Office

Telecommunication Links Status Report

1. Datalinks

2. Message switching systems

a. WMO/GTS (Frost)

b. File Transfer (Netlink → DART)

3. Dedicated link data Volumes

4. Supercomputer/Model

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Main Communications Links from Exeter,… and changes

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Message Switching Systems - Frost

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Frost WMO Message Switching System

HP UNIX 9000 L3000 servers running HP-UX 11i

Active and Hot Stand-by set-up

Synchronisation via 1Gbs-1 Fibre

1Gbs-1 to LAN for data transfers.

Corobor MessirComm for WMO switching

Nexor Mailer for X.400 & SMTP

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GTS Link with NOAA-TOC Washington

BT Frame Relay link – (NOT RMDCN)

64 Kbs-1 Committed Information Rate

Three logical data channels (Alpha-Numeric, GRIB (& T4))

TCP Sockets protocol

Problems: ISDN backup still not functional

Congestion UK to TOC mostly saturated ~50% increase in Received thinned GRIB this year COSMIC data delayed Options:- Upgrade GTS link- Use F/R from NESDIS instead

GTS Volumes (MB/day)

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

450

Rec Alpha numeric Rec GRIB Trans Alphanumeric

Trans GRIB

2005

2006

2007

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GTS Link with NOAA-TOC Washington

Inbound flow may be inhibited due to the saturated Outbound flow being unable to return IP sockets ‘ack’ packets quickly enough.

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FTP File Switches - current (Netlink)

Twin HP Alpha server pairs running OpenVMS

Active and Hot Stand-by, manual failover

In-House application for file switching

File switch for Model & Sat products (non-GTS) ~ 140GB/day

Switches fewer messages than GTS (Frost), but 10 times data volume.

Last upgrade Oct 2004, estimated 2 years growth!

Migration to new service in progress

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FTP File Switches replacement- (DART file dissemination systems)

Uses commodity Intel servers (Dell)

Multiple, resilient RH Linux-based, cluster pairs in DMZ’z Automatic failover, single service address for each pair

Virus-scanning, hardened systems

Use of DWD ‘AFD’ dissemination engine

Separate customer interface for systems on Internet and WAN

Support for multiple protocols (FTP, Secure, HTTP, SMTP etc)

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File transfer links with Nesdis

Issues resolved :

Link to ECMWF upgraded 2MB to 10Mb Migration of private frame-relay tail circuit to new

Nesdis building.

(Outage for period of six weeks due to fault condition)

Emergency usage of backup pathway via the Internet successful during switchover

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Data Type Platform File header MB /day (prev) Files

AMSU-A Level 1B NOAA-ATOVSnss.amax 130 (115)

28

AMSU-B Level 1B NOAA-ATOVSnss.ambx 283 (301)

41

HIRS Level 1B NOAA-ATOVSnss.hirx 294 (255)

68

MHS Microwave Humidity Sounder NOAA-ATOVS nss.mhsx 194 (100) 28

HIRS Level 1B (AVHRR mapped to HIRS grid) NOAA-ATOVSnpr.atav 94 (66)

41

NCEP SST derived from AVHRR (100Km) NOAA-ATOVSprd.sst.field >2 (1)

1

QuikScat Seawinds scatterometer data NASA/JPL npr.qbuf 215 (216) 28

AIRS Brightness temperatures NASA –EOS-2 (Aqua)npr.aibt 261 (569)

223

AMSU-A Brightness temperatures NASA –EOS-2 (Aqua)npr.aubt 11 (12)

231

SSM/I Brightness temperatures DSMP npr.sdrr 240 (227) 43

SSMIS Level 1c DSMPnpr.td{E,I,L,U}b 352 (295)

62

Ozone, retrieved profiles and/or total column from

SBUV DSMP

prd.ozone.pmf 5 (1)

82

Total (wef 30 April 2007)     2081 (2158) 916

Present Data Volumes on Washington NOAA (NESDIS) Link

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Present Data Volumes on Washington NOAA (NESDIS) Link

Data Volum e changes 2004-07

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

MB/day

2004

2005

2006

2007

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Netlink data: NOAA - (NESDIS) Suitland

                                                                                                                                                                                                             

         

Daily (5 Minute Average)

                                                                                                                                                                                                             

         

Yearly (1 Day Average)

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Supercomputing -NEC [2004-]

No change since April 2005 upgrade, the 128-processor NEC SX-8 system doubled the computing power of each of the two existing 120-processor NEC SX-6 systems, which remain operational since April 2004.

See http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2005/pr20050412.html

Theoretical peak power of 16 billion calculations per second per processor

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SuperComputer Changes

Model Now 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

Global 40km 40km 25km 25km 18km 18km

50 levels*(*Dec 20070

70 levels 70 levels 70 levels 100 levels 100 levels

N At Eur 12km 8km 8km 5km 5km 5km

50 levels 70 levels 70 levels 70 levels 100 levels 100 levels

UK 4km 1.5km 1.5km ~0.8km ~0.8km ~0.8km

50 levels 70 levels 70 levels 70 levels 100 levels 100 levels

Specialist   0.25km 0.25km 0.25km 0.25km 0.25km

100 levels 100 levels 100 levels 100 levels 100 levels

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Summary

Main data link – adequate for current use

• Upgrade to Data dissemination (DART) complete (migration of service over next few months)

• Upgraded Internet connection - 30 to 100MBs-1

• Upgraded Link to ECMWF - 2 to 10MBs-1

• Plan for automatic, alternative route via Internet from NESDIS

• Testing of IPVPM replacement for RMDCN commencing